jj abrams not in 3rd star trek movie

There was never any guarantee that we would have directed the third film anyway.
There was talk for a while that someone else might have been directing the second one
I for one am happy I like his direction a great deal, no one is better at that sort of hyperkinetic, smart, younger Spielberg-esque approach but I would like to see a fresh approach for the third film. The crew will be more mature as will hopefully the tone.
I know it ain't happening but I would cream for Nick Meyer, I would be thrilled if he helped tackle the next script
There are plenty of amazing (big budget cgi savvy) directors who could seamlessly step in. Sam mendes, joss whedon, bay, how bout a Ridley Scott directed Trek finale for the trilogy?

Paramount's going to let the Bad Robot people run this show for a while - so if the director isn't Abrams it will be someone mutually agreeable to him and to the Paramount suits.

They really don't need Meyer anywhere near the franchise again; these aren't his characters or his universe. He made a good movie thirty years ago. A lot of people who are actively working in the business have made a lot of good movies since.

We can take bets, but I'd say Summer, 2016. That would be with or without Abrams.

Of course, if Paramount really wanted to show who was in charge of Trek, they could tell the turncoat Abrams to f-off and put the third Trek movie out there with another producer/director to compete head-to-head with "Star Wars" in 2015. That'll show him who he's messing with, by golly! Right?

They really don't need Meyer anywhere near the franchise again; these aren't his characters or his universe. He made a good movie thirty years ago. A lot of people who are actively working in the business have made a lot of good movies since.

Let's bear in mind that a little over two years ago - May of 2011 - Into Darkness didn't have a completed screenplay and Abrams hadn't committed to directing it. Principal photography didn't begin on it until January of 2012, and it's slated for release less than two years later - May of 2013.

Paramount's going to let the Bad Robot people run this show for a while - so if the director isn't Abrams it will be someone mutually agreeable to him and to the Paramount suits.

They really don't need Meyer anywhere near the franchise again; these aren't his characters or his universe. He made a good movie thirty years ago. A lot of people who are actively working in the business have made a lot of good movies since.

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To be fair, he also directed The Undiscovered Country, which I like quite a lot, and contributed significantly to The Voyage Home, which was the most commercially successful Trek movie up until recently.

But, yeah, that was a long time ago.

(I like your sig, btw. There are times I wish we could retire both "iconic" and "canon.")

Our mileage varies on The Undiscovered Country, for sure; I thought Meyer was permitted to indulge himself to a greater extent than before and the movie suffered for it. The look and pacing of the thing was stodgy and uninventive. The mystery was sloppy. The script was larded with simplistic and rather lazy one-to-one analogies to then somewhat-current events and sprinkled pretty much randomly with literary and historical allusions that made less sense if one was aware of their original context than if one were ignorant (the subtitle being the first). Moments that were clearly intended to be sentimental seemed almost cynically inserted. All in all it took itself way too seriously.

OTOH, if Meyer was responsible for the "I'm from Iowa; I only work in outer space" line in ST 4 he gets a free roll.

Bennett, Meyer, Berman, Frakes - Trek fans have an uncanny ability of wishing for the past.

The best move Paramount made was wrestling control of their Trek franchise away from Berman et al and giving it a facelift. I hope they continue moviing in hat same direction should the need of a new director come up for the next film.

OTOH, if Meyer was responsible for the "I'm from Iowa; I only work in outer space" line in ST 4 he gets a free roll.

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My understanding is that Meyer was largely responsible for all the fish-out-of-water, time-travel hijinks in contemporary San Francisco, which makes sense when you consider that he had prevously tread the same ground (to good effect) in TIME AFTER TIME.

I just wish he'd not done the "I turned down Star Wars out of loyalty to Trek" speech - lies and bullshit are the way things work in Hollywood, but it doesn't make it any less distasteful.

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Eh, we don't know what changed between then and now. At the time the comment may have been genuine.

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Oh, given how the Hollywood industry works, you can 100% know what changed -- The amount of JJ Abram's paycheck (or profit-sharing percentage) for taking the Director's helm of Disney's new Star Wars film.

I'm sure there's somewhat more to it than that. Abrams can get the paydays he wants, pretty much. This likely had something to do with the extent of his control over the movie and or his work schedule.

Anniversary nonsense appeals to hardcore fandoms. Paramount has already demonstrated that their business and creative decisions vis-a-vis Star Trek are no longer driven by that kind of pandering.

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Anniversaries are marketing opportunities. Everyone else who has celebrated a 50th anniversary in recent years has marked it somehow, and most Trek anniversaries have been marked. The 5th and 10th, and 15th weren't, but for the 20th we had Trek IV, Trek VI for the 25th, First Contact for the 30th, the priemiere of Enterprise for the 35th. Nothing for the 40th and 45th, so Paramount will want something this time around.

Paramount's going to let the Bad Robot people run this show for a while - so if the director isn't Abrams it will be someone mutually agreeable to him and to the Paramount suits.

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Bad Robot can still be involved even if Abrams does not direct. He didn't direct Ghost Protocol, but that's still considered a Bad Robot production. Hell, there was no guarantee Abrams would direct STID. Trek XIII could very well have a different director. Hell, it's something of a trilogy trope for the third film to be directed by someone different than the first two. With mixed results, admittedly, but it's still a trope all the same.

Anniversary nonsense appeals to hardcore fandoms. Paramount has already demonstrated that their business and creative decisions vis-a-vis Star Trek are no longer driven by that kind of pandering.

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Anniversaries are marketing opportunities. Everyone else who has celebrated a 50th anniversary in recent years has marked it somehow, and most Trek anniversaries have been marked

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Yes, and there's no reason at all to produce and release a 150 million dollar movie to support an anniversary unless it makes business sense in general terms. "Marketing opportunities" are exploited to sell product; product doesn't exist to assist marketing (regardless of what the guys in marketing believe).

We should wait to see how into darkness go in theates first before we talk about the next movie.

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The buzz has been all positive. And something tells me the folks at Disney might have gotten a bit of a peak already and liked enough of what they saw to offer Abrams the director's chair to their newly purchased cash cow.